As Free As Your Options

Comedian Chris Rock once quipped that "a man is basically as faithful as his options." Not only funny, but an insightful observation on interpersonal power dynamics.

It also lends itself to emulation. As in, today, "you are only as free as your options."

Consider your right to earn a living, to trade physical or mental activity for compensation, to find someone who is willing to give you something you want in exchange for something he wants. That right, unenumerated in the Constitution but as fundamental as any other (see: 13th Amendment), has been suffering steady erosion for decades. As with the marriage contract, the labor contract - written or unwritten - is now tripartite, with the government involved in almost every otherwise voluntary exchange of value. Minimum wage is just the tip of the iceberg - any employer will tell you the list of rules, mandates, regulations, and restrictions is long and getting longer.

All this creates friction and diminishes opportunities, especially for the least-skilled (a topic I’ve often covered here). It's always sold as protecting the worker from the rapacity of greedy, powerful, and unscrupulous workers, but it’s in truth a protection racket or other Trojan Horse. Besides, who protects the workers from the government?

Many moons ago, when I was running a twenty-four hour restaurant, I quipped to a friend that if I could figure out how to run a business without employees and without customers, I'd be a happy man. It was a joke comment that reflected the headaches of dealing with both categories, and I'd have forgotten about it but for the fact that, many moons later, he reminded me about it.

The flip side of that is that earning a living absent bosses can be quite liberating for some. And, sure enough, the free market provided, in the form of the gig economy. Technology, in this case the Internet, opened a new pathway to labor independence.

Government's baseline condition is a hatred of freedom. It's why our Constitution's drafters took such great pains to limit what it is allowed to do, to protect, explicitly and implicitly, individuals' rights, and to erect both guard rails and monitoring mechanisms to restrict the tendency toward that baseline condition.

Alas, the Constitution is only as good as the people whose job it is to enforce it, and too many of our public servants forget their oaths of office the moment they've finished uttering them.

The gig economy gave people options to work independently, to set their own hours, to exercise their right to earn a living in a new fashion that skirted both the structures created by employers and the tentacles of government. Of course, it had to be crushed. California, the bellwether of most things anti-liberty, wrote rules that degrade people's gig liberty, with ample unintended consequences that include the supply chain crunch during the COVID lockdowns.

As time goes on, and government writes more and more rules as to conditions of employment, you have fewer and fewer options as to the terms under which you work. As my rephrasing of Rock's quip suggests, you're not really free to earn a living if you aren't free to set the terms under which you exchange your efforts for compensation.

Stack on top of that the minefield created by the social justice movement's mutation into cancel culture. We all know how one's right to earn a living is now subject to compliance with an increasingly restrictive speech and behavioral code. And, worse, an opinion code. It's no longer enough to keep your mouth shut and your head down. Failure to participate, failure to say the correct things, failure to stand and be counted on the correct side of a growing list of cultural issues, and your job (and future jobs) is at risk. As just one cautionary tale, consider the plight of choreographer Lincoln Jones, whose decision to remain apolitical derailed his up-to-then storied career.

If your employment options and terms are substantially restricted, are you really free to work for a living? If your right to speak your mind puts your job or career prospects at risk, do you really have the freedom protected against government infringement by the First Amendment? If your failure to say what’s demanded costs you jobs, prospects, and a future, how can you consider yourself free?

This merging of the woke industry with government, Big Tech, and Big Business has proven to be a very effective end-run on the First Amendment, and on our individual liberties en toto. Yes, there are exceptions to free speech. They're discrete (slander, libel, perjury, intimidation, incitement), long-standing, and best understood as violations of others' rights. They're not about hurt feelings or wrong opinions or "unscientific" (decided by you know who) views. And, for sure, they do not include coerced speech, no matter how “correct” that being demanded may be.

Nevertheless, some remain able to speak their minds with less fear of professional destruction. Many such work independently, whether in the gig economy, in some other form of freelance, have their own small businesses or solo careers, and so forth. Such people are a threat to the woke complex, because it is as illiberal in intent as Stalin's NKVD, so it seems very convenient that those who populate that complex work hard at quashing labor independence in myriad ways. Anti-gig laws, mandates to join labor unions, professional licensing run amok, dozens of agencies regulating employment, big companies requiring woke training and coercing speech, on and on and on, all interfering with your right to earn a living.

And by extension, all your other rights.

The most insidious part of all this is the blurring of lines between government (prohibited from infringing on your rights) and the private sector (as free as you are). This blurring is increasingly putting some part of the private sector into the "state sponsored enterprise" category. That's a hallmark of fascism, by the way: heavy government regulation of private industry, with favoritism shown to a select few - and it raises questions as to the applicability of the First Amendment to such entities. If a private-sector organization is operating on behalf of the government, shouldn't the limits placed on government apply?

Another comedian, Bill Hicks, saw this thirty years ago:

Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here's American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do as we tell you! You are free to do as we tell you!

Once again, you are only as free as your options. Every day, another one is taken away.

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Peter